Sister Anname Dannes

The scene is a suite in the Hotel de Louvre where Annamae Dannes is dressing to see a ballet at the Paris Opera House.  Her friends call to her from another room, “Hurry up!  It was your idea that we go!”  But Annamae is unable to finish putting on her stockings.  Her whole person is caught, centered, concentrated.  “What am I doing here?”  The sense of question is urgent and profound.  Stopped in the middle of an ordinary action, she hears her friends’ concern and is able to continue dressing.  But the depth of the experience causes her to question the whole thrust of her life.

Annamae was born a month before Pearl Harbor and was an only child.  When she was sixteen her mother died of cancer and later her father remarried.  A scholarship to Kent State University enabled her to study elementary education, which tapped into her gifts for relating to people of all ages, and for organizing and making activities enjoyable.  She became a first-rate first grade teacher, and was asked to give talks about teaching after only a few years in the classroom.  Her many friends included party lovers and more serious types because she herself had, and still has, the interests of both.  Annamae likes to give an example of her “double life” by mentioning a vacation where the first week found her enjoying the sights and sounds of New Orleans, and the second week placed her among church people at a Liturgical Conference in St. Louis.

The Paris experience made Annamae realize that her life lacked a focus.  With urgency and some trepidation (she was enjoying her life as it was!), she prayed and read and listened more intently to her spiritual director.  What was the Lord indicating?  The works of the Carmelite, Saint John of the Cross, attracted her deeply.  The way John describes the love with which God desires to overwhelm us touched Annamae personally.  Surrounded by the amazement of her friends, and with the loving understanding of her father, she entered Carmel in 1968 at the age of 26.  Since then the gifts that led her both to New Orleans and St. Louis have flourished in community.  Her positive spirit adds life and her liturgical sense adds beauty to our Divine Office.

Carmelites in other communities have recognized her social and organizing skills and chosen her to be a leader in our Carmelite association.  And though still good at planning parties, you’ll find in Annamae a discipline that gets her to bed on time so she will be alert at both liturgical and quiet prayer the next day.

A Scripture quote that catches something of Annamae is, “God loves a cheerful giver.”  At least that is the opinion of her friend, me, Sister Vera Lea, who asked Annamae if I could write this about her, since she felt unable to take the time now to write herself.